The Leap Motion is a new device that claims to revolutionise the way that we interact with our computers. Like the Microsoft Kinect the Leap Motion uses infrared light to detect the position of objects in 3D space. Heres a video that Leap released demoing the technology –

Several weeks ago I signed up for the Leap Developer programme with the aim to use the device for research and development, after a few weeks of anticipation it finally arrived and I quickly plugged it in eager to try the demos included with the SDK. The software was quick and easy to get up and running and just seemed to work out of the box.

As we went through each demo more people crowded around wanting to give it a go. The technology is certainly interesting enough to grab peoples attention but I couldn’t help asking myself if this was purely a gimmick in which the novelty would quickly wear off or if it truly was the future of computing.

The Minority Report Effect

The film Minority Report came out in 2002, following the up and coming popularity of sci-fi films like The Matrix. These films took advantage of technology being sufficient enough to realise the future in a way that they could demonstrate on film and have one believe that the technology could be real or possible in the near future.

I remember going to the cinema and watching what was probably the most notable scene in the film as Tom Cruise puts on some gloves to interact with a giant curved glass screen. This was at a time where the most popular phone was a Nokia 3510 and nobody had even heard of polyphonic ringtones let alone the iPhone. Touch screens were far from mainstream and our perception for how one interacts with a computer was far more limited than it is today.

This scene sparked the imagination of many researchers who have relentlessly tried to emulate this form of interaction most notably Microsoft first with the surface demonstrated at TED in 2006 and again in 2010 with the Kinect. The popularity of the Kinect has made it easy and affordable for developers like myself to experiment with this technology.

Use cases

The Leap Motion no doubt has useful implications particularly in the medical field, once such example allowing surgeons to perform complex interactions with a computer without having to physically touch a surface. I question however in general purpose if the usefulness of the device on a desktop environment has already been fulfilled by mobile and tablet devices that support mulit-touch that are becoming ever more popular.

Looking at the video released by Leap demonstrating the technology I see little in their examples that can’t be achieved by a touch surface and in a few examples I believe that a touch surface would give you more control and precision.

Technology

The technology behind leap, although fantastic, has very finite limitations that I quickly ran into once I started developing with the unit. The calibration tool that comes with the SDK places points on your screen, you then take a pencil and point to the dot with it. I have a pretty standard computer, a 24″ iMac, and the sensors field of vision was not able to detect about 35% of the screen, meaning I wasn’t able to calibrate the device to my desktop computer.

I proceeded to move over to my MacBook Pro with the hope I could calibrate it to that, however due to the small amount of space above the keyboard and the start of the visible screen I was unable to capture objects on the bottom left and right of the screen. I was already a bit skeptic about its consumer potential, this paired with my own gripes up until a few days ago led me to believe that the technology was not quite ready and had put me off developing any further.

On 27th February I got an email from Leap announcing SDK version 0.7.4 which introduced a gesture library. The mechanics of gestures mean that absolute relation to the screen isn’t important on the basis that your application does not require such precision. I will soon be experimenting with the gestures and hope to open source my own demos in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out on the Simpleweb Blog and the new Labs page for more news.

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